McLaren F1 race engineer Tom Stallard has revealed how Oscar Piastri managed to match the team's regular drivers after 10 laps in the simulator, even with a system failure.
Piastri joined the Formula 1 grid with McLaren last season following his stint as a reserve at Alpine.
Piastri race engineer and McLaren performance director Stallard gave an insight into his first session with the team upon signing, revealing the Formula 3 and Formula 2 champion was able to familiarize himself with their simulator and be on the same pace as their racing drivers in just a few laps, without any reference points.
A problem with the deltas on one lap left him without a time target on the wheel, but Stallard revealed Piastri was in all of their current drivers' key reference points without any feedback.
“We made it our goal to try to get the most out of Oscar as soon as he arrived.”
“Actually, one of the most impressive things Oscar did the first time he worked with the team was he drove the simulator, and they had a problem that made that lap delta wasn't working – lap delta is the number on the dash that tells him how fast he's going relative to his best lap.”
“Within 10 laps, he was matching our racing drivers' lap times, matching all braking points.”
“He fixed everything himself, without any feedback, incredibly quickly, and he has this ability to figure it all out on his own.”
“Often, as a race engineer, one of your jobs is not to bother him for anything. If you say too much, you can create noise in the driver's head – and that's true for n “any driver, not just Oscar.”
“So the drivers themselves have a process of improving and developing and testing things, and what you really want to do is support that. Oscar has this ability to be able to improve on his own without let us cram his head with too much information.”
